By: Julie Kimmel, Manager for Member Cultivation, Moms Clean Air Force
Date: June 13, 2023
About: Environmental Protection Agency Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2023-0072
To: Environmental Protection Agency
My name is Julie Kimmel, and I am the manager of member cultivation for Moms Clean Air Force. Thank you for the opportunity to testify.
I live in Reston, Virginia, with my husband and daughter. I support EPA’s proposal to limit carbon pollution from fossil fuel power plants and ask that EPA finalize the strongest possible standards as quickly as possible. EPA must strengthen community input and safeguards in the final version of this rule.
Anyone who has talked to me in the last two to three weeks knows that my daughter is on a summer swim team, and I am reliving my own childhood summers through her. Not only is she swimming in the same community summer league I did, but her practices are in the same pool where I practiced when I was 8 years old. The nostalgia is real. And I am so excited to share this experience from my own childhood with her.
But last Tuesday night, I was reminded how much times have changed in the 30+ years since my first summer swim season. We arrived at the pool and immediately noticed the haze in the air. At first we thought the kids playing on the volleyball court next to the pool had kicked up a bunch of sand. But we quickly realized it was in fact smoke from the Canadian wildfires hundreds of miles away.
I imagine you’ve heard and will hear a bunch of stories like this one over the course of this hearing. The wildfire smoke that traveled down the East Coast last week was alarming and eerie. I couldn’t believe the AQI numbers I was seeing on my Weather app. Thankfully, my daughter’s school kept kids inside for recess, and swim was more or less canceled Wednesday and Thursday. We hunkered down.
If hundreds of wildfires burning out of control in Canada and sending thick smoke hundreds of miles away isn’t evidence of climate change, I don’t know what is.
At some point in the haze of last week, my daughter told me she wants to “make and be in movies” when she grows up. She wants to be an actor-director-producer. Awesome. I’m here for it. But also, does that mean a life dodging wildfires in the state with much of the worst air pollution in the country?
As a parent concerned about climate change, I often struggle talking to my child about her future. I want to tell her the sky’s the limit, but that’s simply not true. The earth is changing, climate disasters are much more frequent, and my daughter very well won’t have all the options I had when I entered adulthood two decades ago.
So that’s why I’m here asking for the strongest possible standards to limit carbon pollution from fossil fuel power plants. These power plants are responsible for almost a quarter of the climate pollution generated by the US. If we can cut that percentage down, we should do it. And we should do it now. Because our children deserve as comfortable a life and as many opportunities for success as we can give them.